We all knew it was going to happen - the first lawsuits are being filed against Carrier IQ and its data-stealing nature. Not only is CIQ getting hit with a suit, but HTC and Samsung are also being thrown into the ring since many of their phones support the software.

The suit claims that Carrier IQ is in violation of the Federal Wiretap Act, which makes intercepting "oral, wire, or electronic communications" illegal.

If you're a Verizon Wireless customer and concerned about Carrier IQ, it looks like you can leave your worry at the door. Verizon's Jeffery Nelson confirmed via Twitter to The Verge's Joshua Topolsky that Verizon phone are free of CIQ, and that this "was made clear two weeks ago."

So, if you're on Big Red and have been feeling panic-ey thinking about CIQ or digging through your running processes looking for IQRD, you can rest your weary mind - Papa VZW has your back.

Lately, we've talked a lot about Carrier IQ, the "service" that hides itself in the background of an unknown number of Android devices, harvesting information and sending it back to carriers. While it's still unclear how deep the rabbit hole actually goes, the dev who discovered it, TrevE, is still digging in search of the answer. His latest findings may shine a bit of light on the subject, and I can promise you one thing: it's not pretty.

Trevor Eckhart, a developer involved in uncovering a huge security vulnerability that affected several HTC devices, was recently threatened by Carrier IQ (CIQ), a company involved in gathering various forms of user data and sending it to carriers or manufacturers for analysis. For those who haven't been following the story, here's what happened:

Trevor Eckhart found several training manuals on CIQ's website. These were publicly available. Trevor shared them with the community, explaining just how far-reaching CIQ's data collection practices are.

If you don't know who Trevor Eckhart is, you might remember a little piece we published earlier this year about a massive HTC data vulnerability caused by the company's data-logging operations. Trevor was the guy who found that vulnerability and did almost all of the legwork in investigating it. Since then, Trevor has been hard at work looking at more mobile data logging applications used by various manufacturers, including one written by a company called Carrier IQ.

I am quite speechless right now. Justin Case and I have spent all day together with Trevor Eckhart (you may remember him as TrevE of DamageControl and Virus ROMs) looking into Trev's findings deep inside HTC's latest software installed on such phones as EVO 3D, EVO 4G, Thunderbolt, and others.

These results are not pretty. In fact, they expose such ridiculously frivolous doings, which HTC has no one else to blame but itself, that the data-leaking Skype vulnerability Justin found earlier this year pales in comparison.